Sunday 12 July 2009

And now for something completely different

It's been a while. To be fair, in the last month, I've been to Basel, Brussels and Vienna. That's not really a boast – I was mostly working, innit (except Basel, where I was climbing mountains, swimming in rivers and getting off my face on spas and shit).

I was in Brussels for maybe six hours, long enough to find the cashpoint in the station.

Vienna I spent a bit more time in. Stunning city – looks like it was built yesterday, supposing yesterday was 1850. Ultravox didn't write a song about it for nothing. Anyway, there I broke a toilet with my own poo: true story.

So yeah, the point I was going to make is that despite all the neglect I lavish on this blog, I'm actually doing a pretty good job, comparatively. According to Caslon Analytics, some Australians who research stuff when they aren't slapping shrimps five times the size of those found in British waters onto a barbecue grill in a stereotypically brash manner, 60 to 80% of blogs cease to exist within a month of conception. And most of these probably have some sort of purpose, other than mine which seems to just needlessly fill the internet with more words.

What I am offering is diversity. Outside a Raphael Saddiq gig, the sight of a slightly hairy 30-year-old white dude of average height is about as eventful as an episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. If this was a bell curve, I'd be sitting right at the top, admiring the view.

But in the world of blogging, I'm an anomaly. I'm chronologically challenged, genderly transgressive and I DON'T GET EXCITED ENOUGH. In fact:
The typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life. It will be written very informally (often in "unicase": long stretches of lowercase with ALL CAPS used for emphasis) with slang spellings, yet will not be as informal as instant messaging conversations (which are riddled with typos and abbreviations).

Teenagers have created the majority of blogs. Blogs are currently the province of the young, with 92.4% of blogs created by people under the age of 30. Half of bloggers are between the ages of 13 and 19. Following this age group, 39.6% of bloggers are between the ages of 20 and 29.

Better still, one commenter notes that blogging "remains the dominion of geeks, wittier-than-thou twenty-to-thirtysomethings in Manhattan and angry gay Republicans." At least I'm not a Republican.

This all means the odds against me actually getting off my arse and posting this are astronomical. So if you're reading this, think yourself lucky. Or don't. Your choice.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm jealous of your recent travels old bean! The best i've had journo-wise recently is a trip to derby!

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey said...

I hear Derby is nice this time of year.